We will have a broad-based "brick wall"
session. Our plan is to have several "area" desks available, each supported
by an expert in a particular area of research, to answer your questions. We
will seek to cover as many areas of research as our members want to ask
about. Please feel free to email your questions in advance of the meeting.
Send them to
and we will ask one of our experts to be ready to answer on January 10.

February

Wednesday, February
17, 2010*** Special Program - Evening
Meeting ***

Program:

How to Find Anyone, Anywhere, Anyhow, Using the Latest in Online
Mapping, Tracking and Detecting Techniques

Jewish family history does not have to be a mystery. We and
our ancestors all leave a paper trail that can unravel the story of our
families for many
generations, across the ocean and into the smallest of shtetls.

Join
us for our FREE* Beginner's Workshop

A great start for the novice...

Even if you have been a member of JGSGW for a while, a
great way to get back to the basics...

This will be a 1-1/2 hour session jam-packed with resources, helpful hints and
motivation.

Program:

Whatever you wanted to know about Ashkenazi Jewish diseases;
a program about our heritage and our health

The purpose of this program is to
provide up-to-date information on the genetic conditions which occur
more frequently in Jews of Ashkenazi descent. Each of these
disorders can be devastating, not only to those affected, but to the
families involved. This program will explore the diagnosis,
management, and treatment of all eleven of the Ashkenazi Jewish
Genetic Conditions with a focus on the most common Jewish Genetic
disorder – Gaucher disease. More than 9 out of 10 Jewish Americans
are unaware of Gaucher disease. Approximately one in 850 people may
have Gaucher, and the carrier rate is approximately 1 in 16. Gaucher
disease is two and a half times more common than Tay-Sachs!

The
objectives of the program are as follows:

To learn about “Founder Effect”
among the Ashkenazim.

To gain knowledge about the
eleven genetic conditions among the Ashkenazim.

Gary asked for those planning on attending the March 7 program who
would like him to check their surname (the original name in Europe
or elsewhere) and its connection to Founders effect, to submit their
surname only (no personal information). He will not do personal
research but rather use submitted names to illustrate Founder
effect. Names should submitted to
prior to the meeting.

April

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Program:

What It Was Like to Arrive in America Through Ellis Island

Location:

Beth El, Alexandria

Time:

1:30 PM - Business Meeting and Announcements

2:00 PM - Program

Speaker: Barry Nove

Barry Nove (click
here for biography) will share the story
and the techniques he used to learn what it was like for his ancestors and
many of ours to arrive in America through Ellis Island.

Barry began his family history quest when he
organized the first family re-enactment tour of Ellis Island, which was
filmed by PBS as background material for a genealogy documentary series
called Ancestors, which aired in 1997. Barry was granted unique access to
the Ellis Island Museum, worked with the museum’s archivists, and gained an
understanding and appreciation of what his great-grandparents and
grandparents experienced coming to America. Barry obtained photographs of the ships
that brought his family to America from the ports of Bremen (North German
Lloyd Line’s Berlin), Danzig (American Line’s New Rochelle – originally
Hamburg), Hamburg (Hamburg-American Line’s Graf Wandersee), and Rotterdam
(Holland-America’s New Amsterdam, Noordam), naturalization documents and
passenger manifests, and historical research.

Sallyann
Sack will speak on "Following False Trails." Please feel free to email
your similar experiences in advance of the meeting. Send them to
and we will ask Sallyann to be ready to discuss these experiences on
May 16.

Sallyann
Amdur Sack, PhD, is the only genealogist listed in Jewish Women in
America. She was instrumental in founding the International
Institute for Jewish Genealogy, Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater
Washington, International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies,
and Avotaynu. Dr. Sack has chaired or co-chaired six of the annual
conferences on Jewish Genealogy, authored seven books of use to
genealogists and has consulted on numerous projects.
Read Sallyann's biography on the Avotaynu website: http://www.avotaynu.com/SallyannSack.html.

June

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Program:

Annual Meeting
Note: This meeting is for members only.
Annual Luncheon and Volunteer Recognition Meeting

On June 6th Rand H. Fishbein, Ph.D. (click
for bio), one of our members and a member of the Board of Governors of
JewishGen, will be addressing us on the subject of JewishGen and ways it
can be improved to serve the needs of its users. He has asked that
attendees come prepared for a lively dialog and ready to share any
thought or ideas they might have on the organization and its role in
fostering Jewish genealogy. Dr. Fishbein is eager to bring your ideas
back to the JewishGen Board of Governors, which is now developing a
Mission Statement and Strategic Plan for the organization. He is
particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on the needs of the
Jewish genealogical community, new research avenues JewishGen should be
exploring, JewishGen’s relationship with Ancestry.com, ways to improve
user access to data, the role of JewishGen in strengthening Jewish
cultural literacy and identity and what we can do to attract the younger
generation into the fold.

Your active participation will be vital to the success of this session.
This is a great opportunity to share our thoughts on the operation of
one of the most important tools now available to aid Jewish genealogical
research. Given that the Society will be hosting the 2011 conference, a
discussion of the sort we will be having couldn’t be more timely.

September

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Program:

Genealogy From the Inside Out:
Tracing a Family Secret From a Single Clue

When
family secrets alter our understanding of the family tree, when we learn
about a hidden relative (or a hidden marriage, or a hidden divorce, or a
hidden cause of death), how do we pursue that single clue? Using a
slide presentation of a secret involving his own family, Steve brings
the audience along on the journey he took to write his award-winning
book, Annie’s Ghosts: A
Journey Into a Family Secret,
published in 2009 and now out in paperback. He
travels through burial records, birth certificates, hospital records,
immigration documents and wartime records, and assembles them into a
coherent paper trail. Copies of "Annies Ghosts..." will be available for
sale and Steve has agreed to autograph books.

1:00 PM - Schmooze
1:30 PM - Short Business Meeting, Announcements, and Program

Speaker: Boris Feldblyum

There is no substitute for knowledge.
To which I might add - and for patience; and for coolness and for
clarity of mind; and for being methodical and systematic. These
qualities are always helpful, especially when we expand research into a
foreign country, where problems are compounded by strange languages,
equally strange history, and still stranger working habits of local
archivists.

Boris Feldblyum is president of FAST
Genealogy Service, an organization formed in 1992. His expertise is in
East European archival research, missing relatives search, probate
search, English translation of archival documents, and consulting.
He is an outstanding professional photographer. A collection of his
photographs, primarily from eastern Europe, may be found at http://www.bfcollection.net/subjects/shtetl.html.
Among his many accomplishments is his book, "Russian-Jewish Given Names:
Their Origins and Variants".

He has been a long-time member of JGSGW.

This celebration meeting will be enhanced with
special goodies from "Confections by Sue." There will be a drawing for
Door Prizes. Fun for all.

Jewish family history does not have to be a mystery. We and
our ancestors all leave a paper trail that can unravel the story of our
families for many generations, across the ocean and into the smallest of shtetls.
Join us for our FREE* Beginner's Workshop.

A great start for the novice...

Even if you have been a member of JGSGW for a while, a
great way to get back to the basics...

This will be a 2-hour session jam-packed with resources, helpful hints and
motivation.

No charge for JGSGW members. Non-members
wishing to participate in this workshop may join JGSGW
up until the day of the workshop and participate if
there is space available.

Jewish tombstones
are an excellent source of information for genealogists. This is
especially true if you are familiar with Hebrew and the rules,
customs and symbols. Steve Venick will provide some historical
background and demystify the reading and interpretation. Attendees
are encouraged to bring photos of family tombstones for him to
translate. First in line will be those photographs that are sent in
advance to
.

Settlement
of the village that became Trochenbrod started in the early 1800s in a small
clearing in the forest in what is today northwest Ukraine. Jews began
settling there and farming because under Czarist decrees, only by doing that
could they avoid oppressive anti-Jewish laws, including having their sons
conscripted to serve in the Russian army until age 45. As Trochenbrod grew
to its final population of about 5,000 people it became the only
freestanding town created, populated, and self-governed entirely by Jews
ever to exist outside the biblical Land of Israel. Trochenbrod became a
thriving regional commercial center that had a highly diversified and
largely self-sufficient economy.

Trochenbrod was "…a magical place,” according to the memoir of one visitor
in the 1930s, and also according to the few Trochenbrod natives who survive.
This magical place was the only town to completely and permanently vanish in
the Holocaust. In August and September 1942 the Nazis and their helpers
murdered the people of Trochenbrod. The town had been created by
anti-Semitism and it was destroyed by anti-Semitism. Because there had been
none but Jews in Trochenbrod, no one was left there, and all traces of the
town soon vanished.

The
book,
The Heavens are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod,
is the product of twelve years of research by Washington, DC resident Avrom
Bendavid-Val, including nine visits to the site where Trochenbrod once stood
and the surrounding region.
He tells its history not as a scholarly presentation, but as a story,
including a little bit of how he uncovered what happened in this vanished
place. The book is unique in the variety of first person accounts he draws
on, including those of Ukrainians and Poles who knew the town as children.
It’s also unique in the large number of photographs and maps it contains.
The emphasis is on the life and vibrancy that was there, not just on the
town’s destruction.